Nicotine and pregnancy

[SickRose]

Hi all! After chatting to someone today at work about smoking and pregnancy we got talking about vaping and where the risks lie there. We had a google but there seemed to be a lot of conflicting information! And well, how much of the Internet can you trust really? Was wondering if anyone here has had this conversation with a doctor etc?

I am not a doctor, have not had the conversation & have not been pregnant for some 35 years.

I am an avid vaper - it has been the only thing that has made me give up fags.

BUT - I would be very wary of having any form of nicotine if Iwere pregnant.

Well given that doctors advise you to give up smoking but allow you to use nrt then in my opinion it's not the best, but better than smoking.
If I was pregnant, I'd try not to use any, but if I did it would be the lowest possible nicotine level.

I wouldn't mainly because it hasn't been 'tested' for those situations (and who would test on pregnant women eh?). If I had to choose I would stick to nrt products like lozenges, lowest possible with trying to get off them asap as per the guidelines. As it was I just quit cold turkey when I got pregnant.

Nicotine restricts the blood flow to the baby. It's not advisable.

Around 11% of pregnant women are smokers at the time of delivery in the UK. Any risks of nicotine on its own need to be evaluated in relation to that stat.

NRT is routinely prescribed for pg women who cannot quit cold turkey. ASH say: Smoking during pregnancy is associated with a number of disorders and nicotine is believed to be a factor in adversely affecting fetal brain and lung development. The extent of harm from use of nicotine from other sources, notably nicotine replacement therapy, is less clear but the evidence to date suggests that medicinal nicotine does not reduce birth weight and is not a cause of serious developmental abnormalities. In fact, the only study that compared fetal and maternal outcomes in pregnant women who used nicotine and placebo patches reported better outcomes with nicotine patches.

NHS advice on vaping in pregnancy here:

Many people are choosing to use e-cigarettes to help them stop smoking. While these products are not completely risk free and the vapour may contains some toxins, these are at far lower levels than in cigarette smoke, so using an e-cigarette is a great deal safer than smoking

However, little is known about any potential risks of e-cigarette vapour to your baby and mums-to-be are therefore recommended to use one of the licensed stop smoking medications such as nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) to help reduce any withdrawal symptoms when quitting smoking.

If you do want to use an e-cigarette – maybe because you’ve tried other methods without success – there is lots of advice and support available from your local Stop Smoking Service. The most important thing for you and your baby is to stop smoking.